CIRCUMSTANCES OF LOSSOn 9 September 1942, Lieutenant Deuterman was piloting an F4F Wildcat fighter (F4F-3 02515), on a routine flight over American Samoa. Mechanical problems forced him to attempt a water landing, but the aircraft flipped over on impact and sank.Lieutenant Deuterman was determined to have died in the accident. His remains were not recovered.

Biography:
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Lieutenant Bill Deuterman was killed of Savaii on September 9, 1942. Bill, who always said that he would never bail out of a crippled airplane, ran into trouble over the bay and could not make it back to Faleola. He tried to set his F4F down on the water. Jeff Poindexter, who was flying on Bill’s wing all the way down, saw Bill stand up in the cockpit at about the last minute before the airplane impacted. Bill was clearly trying to bail out, but he was too low in any case for his chute to have deployed. Jeff watched in sheer horror as the F4F’s propeller bit into the waves. This flipped the airplane over at great speed and threw Bill against the windscreen and instrument panel. Jeff was certain that Bill died on impact. If not, he was certainly unconscious when he sank forever beneath the waves.
– R. Bruce Porter, Ace! A Marine Night-Fighter Pilot in World War II